Ray was breathing in a whistling way, each breath sucked into him like he didn’t know if he’d be able to take another. He held up a hand, imploring Amy to wait for a moment while he caught his breath before explaining.
After he finally stood from his previous position of crouching over with his hands on his knees, Ray had finally developed a more normal rhythm of breathing. He looked at Amy, taking in the bright, intelligent blue eyes and long, thick brown hair he’d always admired. He’d longed since he met her for those eyes to meet his with something other than companionability, inquiry or laughter, but things had never progressed between them. Now, he was almost glad of it. He’d hate to have to leave her alone-as he knew he’d have to before night fell-if they were romantically involved.
“We’ll walk while we talk,” Ray said in a voice still slightly strained from their run. “We want to get as far as we can while we’re still together.”
Amy didn’t like what that implied: that they would be splitting up. Deciding not to confront Ray about that possibility, she silently nodded and followed as he began walking.
Though he didn’t ask, Ray knew which way Amy had intended to be going. She was going home to her family, and he knew the freeway would be her first destination. If he could find a car for her, he would. His own had been destroyed the night before, along with the rest in the parking area he typically parked in. He didn’t know what had exploded or burned to accomplish the devastation, but the cars were burned-out hulls of mangled metal completely unusable to anyone who wanted to drive them.
“You were going to talk, Ray,” Amy reminded him softly as they walked at a fairly quick clip over the hard, frozen ground of the campus forefront. “So go ahead and talk. I want to know whatever you know about this.”
Ray admired that about Amy, as he admired so many things about her. She wasn’t panicked; she wasn’t scared; she was merely inquisitive and cautious. She wanted to know what she could about what was going on so she could approach it as smartly as she was able.
“There were two others with me when it started,” Ray recalled as they walked. “When it hit, we all felt it. Some people couldn’t take the power of it, and they passed out when the corruption swept through. Others of us, well, maybe we anticipated it better or something. Maybe we were corrupt enough to begin with.”
“Don’t say that,” Amy interjected, because by him saying that, Ray counted himself among the corruption.
“I’m just hypothesizing here, Amy,” Ray explained calmly. “I don’t know why some people were taken by it and couldn’t stay conscious for it, or why some people can half control it and some lost all control immediately. I have my thoughts, but they aren’t quite there yet. I have to work it through, I have to figure it out, and if you want to hear what I think and what conclusions I’ve come to, you’re going to have to bear through some of my thought process with me. We only have until the night…”
When he trailed off, Amy didn’t immediately add more contribution to the conversation. She knew Ray intended to leave her alone when the night came, and there was little she wanted less.
“Anyway, there were two people with you when it happened,” Amy repeated in an invitation for Ray to continue.
“Right,” Ray agreed with a nod. “Tony and Alex. When it hit, Tony went insane. Something happened that just…warped him, I guess. The first thing I thought was that he had become corrupted. Some cancerous darkness of the soul ate him up and destroyed who he was. What came up in his place was…violent. Evil. Alex seemed fine at first. He was hit by it, same as me, same as Tony, but he fought it like I did. Tony ran out of our dorm room and attacked the first person he saw. Just flung himself at the guy and mauled him like a rabid dog. Alex and I watched, and we saw other people doing the same thing. They were tearing at each other, at people who hadn’t been corrupted or were maybe fighting it, and there was blood everywhere. Alex and I shut the door and barricaded it.”
Amy remembered doing the same thing to her own door, and why. She’d seen a lesser level of the violence Ray and Alex had experienced, and had known enough to get herself safe and unexposed.
“Alex and I talked it out, tried getting down what we knew and our theories before something else happened. Alex was the first to point out the near-psychic level of awareness about what was happening around us. He said he felt like he knew everything about the situation, and then nothing at all. He second-guessed himself, got frustrated and when that happened, we experienced another part of the phenomenon.”
Ray took a deep breath, remembering what had happened when Alex threw a punch at the wall with a shout of frustration.
“There was something inside him,” Ray recalled. “When Alex moved in anger, the thing was able to make itself known. We could see it under Alex’s skin, like a shadow. Like something was wearing Alex like a very intricately designed suit and could occasionally force itself through. When Alex threw a punch, the thing flung out shadowy, black claws at the wall. When he beat his head against the refrigeration in frustration, that same black shape forced itself from under Alex’s face and snapped at the freaking magnets. What Alex and I were fighting, what Tony lost the fight to, they weren’t gone. They were inside.”
Ray and Amy had reached the teacher parking lot on one side of the admissions office. These cars mostly seemed as though they hadn’t been tampered with. In the age of key fobs and auto-lock systems, Ray doubted they’d be lucky enough to find a vehicle with the keys inside.
“If we want one of these cars, we’re going to have to steal keys from an office. We’re not going to find an unlocked car out here.”
“You mean…go back inside?” Amy asked with a shudder. She eyed the building suspiciously, and her overactive imagination acted as though it wanted to grant her x-ray vision; showing her the shapes of creatures once human prowling the hallways of a building they no longer associated personal or professional meaning to.
“No thank you,” Amy said decidedly. “I’m not going back in there anytime soon. Maybe a house we know is deserted. Maybe then. Keep talking; we’ll keep walking for now.”
Ray nodded his agreement and they turned away from the campus. It was going to be all road walking now and freeway as soon as they could manage. Ray figured they had a better chance of finding an abandoned, unlocked car with the keys in it there. They would certainly hit the freeway before dark, and then Ray would be on his own way.
“The more frustrated Alex got the more hold the creature seemed to have. Before he decided he had to leave, he told me, “It talks to you. Haven’t you heard it? We know what it is. Deep down, we know. And even if we don’t, it’ll tell you. Don’t listen, Ray. If you don’t hear it yet, don’t try to.” And then he left. I don’t know where he went, but I knew I had to wait until dawn to try to make any move. Here’s what I know for sure, Amy. What Alex and I figured out and what I’ve deduced on my own.”
Amy nodded, not wanting to interrupt Ray’s flow.
“There are the corrupted. Those are the ones that were fully taken over immediately. They went insane, violently insane. They have no qualms about killing. In fact, they seem to seek it out. There are those that could fight, or those that didn’t have effort wasted on for full corruption. You see, that’s one thing Alex and I didn’t get a chance to talk about but I’ve started thinking about on my own. The people who fell asleep, the ones who were knocked unconscious by the takeover…the things weren’t trying to take them. The ones who were awake had to fight full corruption. They. Had. To. Fight.”
He spaced out his words so that Amy would see that he placed incredibly importance on that fact.
“Do you have a theory as to why they had to fight it?” Amy asked as she stepped over a loose car tire. Somewhere nearby, an accident had happened. Probably a pretty bad one if the tire had landed on the sidewalk where they were.
“You,” Ray said quietly, and Amy gave him a confused, consternated look.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Think of the people nearby me when it happened: Tony and Alex. Of the girls who live with you. You may not have seen them, but I guarantee they were among the ones fully taken over. They didn’t fall asleep. They got hit full force. Our group of friends all had to fight it, and I think it was because here at the college, we were the ones closest to you.”
Ray went quiet, letting his hypothesis sink into Amy. She was a smart girl. It was one thing he’d always liked about her. Not only was she book smart, but she was real life smart, street smart. She didn’t have that affliction where she could ace any test without studying but had absolutely no common sense. Amy was in possession of a well-rounded intelligence, and that more than anything was what Ray was counting on to get her through this.
“I’m not corrupted,” Amy began, using Ray’s word for the blight. “You think there’s something particularly important about that.”
“I know it,” Ray stated, referencing the nearly psychic ability he’d developed in regards to the situation. “Even now, I feel the pull to do something…something horrible. Whatever is inside me wants you. It wants you more than it wants to cause death or destruction. It wants to hurt you, but more than that, it wants to take you.”
“Take me where?” Amy asked. Then, she stumbled. She didn’t look too closely at the charred thing she’d nearly lost balance over, but part of her brain registered it as the burnt remains of some once-living creature. She stoutly averted her gaze and kept walking.
“Somewhere,” Ray murmured. He wasn’t looking at his feet as Amy now was surreptitiously every now and then, both hoping to avoid tripping over anything else and hoping to keep her gaze from landing on more nasty things.
“Well, that’s not creepy or cryptic,” Amy said sarcastically.
They stopped talking and started walking in silence. Though it was mostly companionable, Amy felt herself easing now and then toward suspicion of Ray’s thoughts and intentions. Nothing was as it seemed now, not even friends. Even as she thought this, however, she found herself unwilling to leave Ray’s company before absolutely necessary. Out here, he was the only thing she had.
The cold air made Amy’s chest hurt, but she was in fair physical shape. She walked for an hour and a half every day; rain or shine, hot or cold. Carrying her pack made the walk slightly more strenuous, but she was happy to find it was nothing she couldn’t handle for the time being.
“What about that car?” Amy suddenly asked in an excited tone.
The door to the black Ion was ajar, the emergency lights flashing. It was a newer model, but not brand new, and the only problem with it was that it had recently suffered a minor collision. The passenger side was slightly crumpled inward, and resting against it was the blue minivan that had crashed into it.
Neither vehicle retained the drivers or passengers they may have had. Amy and Ray cautiously approached, checking in all available windows before even daring to open the door of the Ion.
The keys were inside, along with luggage and hastily packed canned food, bottled water and a red medical kit in the backseat. Whoever had been in the Ion seemed to have been planning on leaving the city for another location, perhaps a less populous area, and had brought the necessities for a stay away.
Amy didn’t like that both vehicles were empty. She got in the driver’s seat, anyway, and turned the key. The engine turned over with no protest, and Ray slid into the backseat, pushing the black duffle back that had been pressed against the driver’s seat on top of the other supplies in the back. The heat, which had been left on, blasted out of the vents, and Amy appreciated the warm air on her face.
“Wait,” Ray said suddenly as he opened the door back up and got out. “Open the trunk.”
Without arguing the necessity of it, Amy hit the remote release that was hanging from the keychain with the ignition key and two others. She was actually glad Ray had thought of it, and silently counseled herself to think more about things like that in the future.
Ray stepped back into the frigid air, hoping the car would heat up quickly while he checked the trunk. He’d never been a fan of the cold, even though he was a Michigander through and through.
He looked discreetly around and even though he didn’t see the eyes on him, he felt them. Though he was not their main item of interest, they observed him nonetheless. The sun was all that stood between them and the girl in the car he was hoping to protect. At least until night came. He wished the sun would never leave the sky, because at that point, he would need to leave Amy’s side. The inevitable obligation of it was making him more nervous than the eyes he knew were on him.
The trunk was as ajar as it would get without outside help from him. There was a faintly repellent smell emanating from within, and before he even touched it he knew he wasn’t going to like what he was about to find inside.
“Stay inside the car, Amy,” Ray said in a voice he raised only enough to be heard. As the silence was penetrated only by his voice, he didn’t have to raise it very far.
Amy’s sharp intake of breath was enough to let him know she’d heard him, but she followed it up with, “what’s in there?”
Even if Ray had been willing to shut the trunk without looking inside, Amy’s question meant that he had to look. He didn’t want to. He didn’t know if the creature residing inside of him gave him heightened senses or if the smell of death was just becoming that pronounced and familiar to him, but he knew before he lifted the trunk that something once-living now occupied the space.
With the trunk fully opened, Ray could see the mutilated corpse of a small dog. Possibly a puppy, but from the look of it, one of the small yappers that every other woman over fifty seemed inclined to own.
The viscera were spilling from the torn stomach of the poor animal, and that was where the stink was coming from. He couldn’t tell if it was a weapon or something worse that had accomplished the mutilation, but the dog certainly hadn’t died a natural death.
Before he decided whether he wanted to shut the trunk without removing the unfortunate pooch or just hope the smell wouldn’t be too offensive during Amy’s drive, Ray noticed something resting beneath the bloodied body that he couldn’t ignore. He sighed, because he knew he’d have to move the dog.
Moving back to the supplies, Ray grabbed the first aid kit and hastily dug through it until he found what he was looking for. He slipped the latex gloves on, and they were slightly too tight. They would do for the job he had in mind, so he didn’t care about the bad fit.
“What are you doing?” Amy asked, and she spoke in a hushed voice.
Ray didn’t know why Amy was speaking so quietly, but he echoed her caution and responded in the same low tone, “There’s a dead dog in the trunk. I don’t want to get blood on my hands.”
Amy fought not to whimper and stared determinedly at the steering wheel. She belatedly responded, “Okay,” before realizing Ray had returned to the trunk and his unseemly task.
Ray lifted the pooch gingerly, trying not to get blood on his clothes, either. The internal organs stayed in the trunk, having been fully gouged out from the dog’s small body before whoever had done so had placed the animal in its ill-fitted tomb. Ray nearly gagged to see them tumble wetly away from the small creature, but was thankful they were on the opposite side of his true target.
Moving a few feet away from the car and placing the dog in the grass on the side of the road, Ray wished he could’ve offered what had surely been a beloved family pet a better burial. He could not, however, and he didn’t spend too much time mourning the fact. His far more important concern was in the car, awaiting his return.
Upon facing the trunk once more, Ray had a moment to consider whether or not to remove the viscera or leave it where it was. In the high summer, it’d not even have been an option, but this was deep winter. They wouldn’t begin to stink for a while, and Amy would be sure to find a better vehicle before it became an issue.
Feeling an odd compulsion, driven by the insane thought that th
e dog in a ghostly, incorporeal form would somehow feel lost if its innards went to a different part of the state while its body remained here, Ray quickly scooped up the internal organs in both hands and placed them beside the body of the deceased. Queerly, Ray felt much better after the fact.
He once more approached the trunk and grabbed what he was truly after: a heavy, four-sided tire iron. He hoped Amy wouldn’t have to use it, yet at the same time wished even more fervently that if she did have to, that she wouldn’t hesitate. Hesitation would cost Amy her life. Ray was almost certain of that.
After slamming the trunk, Ray returned to the backseat and shut the door. He removed the gloves and rolled the window down to toss them out. It wasn’t like he was going to get a citation for littering, he thought to himself. When Amy put the car into reverse, all the doors locked automatically. Ray felt instantly better.
He placed the tire iron on the passenger seat, and Amy looked at it as she would a snake.
“What’s that for?” she asked with a measure of suspicion and unease in her voice.
“If you’re attacked, you need to defend yourself,” Ray explained simply.
The way he said the words made Amy nervous. It was like he hadn’t wanted to say “if,” but would have preferred to say “when.”
Without responding, Amy switched on the radio. She’d hoped to hear a newscaster detailing the event, or even an official government statement urging people to stay inside or seek shelter at specific locations. She heard neither. Calm white noise greeted her across all AM and FM frequencies.
“There’s not even one lowly radio broadcaster left?” Amy said in disbelief as she turned the radio off. “I thought those guys would be having a field day covering the end of the world.”
“That’s the thing about the end of the world, I guess,” Ray responded bleakly. “Everything ends…”
Amy caught Ray’s gaze in the rearview mirror, hoping he would smile and make light of his statement, but his eyes were as bleak as his voice had been. He really believed it was the end, and Amy couldn’t find much evidence to counter his argument.
Out of the Dark: An apocalyptic thriller Page 6